Northern Bay Sands is a popular beach and campgrounds in Northern Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. In 1775, a ship supposedly crashed off the coast of the beach due to the Great Hurricane of 1775. Throughout the 19th and early 20th century the beach was used as a site for gutting, cleaning and salting fish in the small-boat cod fishery. After Confederation, the beach became a provincial park.
Tourism at the park - which presently has upwards of 50 campsites - steadily increased over the next few decades. In 1997, a majority of provincial parks in Newfoundland and Labrador were privatized.
The beach is frequented by many tourists between Victoria Day Weekend (May 24th) and Labour Day Weekend in September. In the past there were music festivals, with a large one called The Beach Bash, that took place at least once a summer at the park. Presently, The Beach Bash and other festivals are no longer held and the stage where musicians performed for the festival has been removed. Coincidentally, the current owner and operator of the beach is Neal O'Leary, the independent Newfoundland musician who first started The Beach Bash.
Northern Bay Sands has two freshwater pools on the northern end of the beach and the majority of its campsites on the southern end. There are two bars, a laundromat, a café and a take-out restaurant within walking distance of the beach.
Famous quotes containing the words northern, bay and/or sands:
“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty—
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes”
—Hart Crane (1899–1932)
“That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze
Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume
Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze
Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;
An epitaph of glory for the tomb
Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,
Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;
Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;
The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)